Canonical released its new Minimal Ubuntu yesterday. According to the
Ubuntu
blog, Minimal Ubuntu is "optimized
for automated use at scale, with a tiny package set and minimal security
cross-section. Speed, performance and stability are primary concerns for
cloud developers and ops." The images are 50% smaller than the standard
Ubuntu server images and they boot up to 40% faster. Minimal Ubuntu also is
fully compatible with standard Ubuntu operations. You can download it here.

Mozilla launches two new Mobile
Test Pilot Experiments: Firefox Lockbox for
iOS and Notes by Firefox for Android. Firefox
Lockbox allows iOS users to
access Firefox-saved passwords saved in the browser to log in to any online
account or app. With Notes by Firefox, users can "sync notes from any Firefox
browser on any Android smartphone or tablet", and the notes are end-to-end
encrypted as well. These projects are experimental, and Mozilla welcomes
feedback here.

An Ubuntu bug that allows anyone with physical access to the computer to
bypass the lockscreen by removing the hard drive has just been made public.
According to the Neowin
post, the bug was tested on Ubuntu 16.04.4, and it's not certain whether
it affects other Ubuntu versions or distributions.

Google announced
the release of Jib yesterday, an open-source Java tool that allows
developers to build containers. Jib is "a fast and simple container image
builder that handles all the steps of packaging your application into a
container image", and you don't need to write a Dockerfile or have docker
installed to use it.

Wine 3.12 is now
available. This release contains many bug fixes, and other new features
include Unicode data upgraded
to Unicode 11.0.0, proxy configuration dialog in internet control panel, more
glyphs in the Wingdings font and more.